Battle of Hastings

Sir Max Hastings, whom I engaged as editor of the Daily Telegraph in 1986 and who stayed in that role for about nine years, seems to have installed himself at the head of the rabid mob of journalistic haters of Boris Johnson.

In recent pieces in The Spectator and the Guardian he has described Boris as ‘a tasteless joke’ interested only in ‘fame and gratification… a scoundrel or a mere rogue’ (a subtle distinction), and in any case a man afflicted by ‘moral bankruptcy’.

Max concedes that Boris is likely to be the next prime minister and preemptively accuses him of conducting a ‘celebrity government as in Ukraine and the US’. His government will ‘reveal contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability’, yet ‘his graver vice is cowardice… and a weak character’.

There is certainly room for debate about Boris Johnson as prime minister. But he possesses a number of remarkable qualities considerably beyond the talents Hastings accords him as an entertainer and a clown.